Yuna Kizuna
UA Hero Course Applicant
Ten slots.
Out of all the people who apply to UA University looking to get into the Hero Course, only a few hundred will make it to the entrance exams, and only ten of those few hundred will be accepted. Two students from recommendation, and eight from general admission.
Those ten slots will be further divided into two classes of five students each, Class 1-A and Class 1-B.
That meant out of all the hundreds of people here today, only eight will actually make it, as the recommended students have already been accepted.
Yuna Kizuna, eighteen-year-old newly graduated high school student, intended to be one of those eight applicants selected.
Not because she wished to be some super awesome hero like All Might or
anything. In fact, All Might didn't even exist in this timeline. It was one of the first differences Yuna noticed in her second life. All Might, the Symbol of Peace, never existed.
Yuna didn't even know how to react to that information once she found out. It just seemed so... unbelievable.
She remembered watching My Hero Academia in her first life. She remembered Izuku Midoriya, the quirkless boy who became the successor to the number one hero. She remembered Shigaraki, the edgy teenage gamer who had been manipulated his whole life by the evil potato-head wannabe demon lord, All For One. And of course, she remembered the most iconic hero, All Might.
Immediately upon realizing that this world was not the "canon" My Hero verse, Yuna researched all she could. Discreetly, of course. If she just started typing in a bunch of powerful people's government names, she likely would have been flagged and made to "disappear" or something equally ominous by the HPSC.
What she found out, though, was that things were very different from what she remembered.
As far as she's been able to find out, Toshinori Yagi, AKA All Might, never existed. His mentor, Nana Shimura, did, and was, in fact, a hero. However, from what Yuna could find, her only quirk was Float. She did not have the telltale strength and power of One For All, and she unfortunately died in the line of duty as a hero before Yuna was born. However, Yuna couldn't find any evidence of All For One being involved.
Now, that didn't exactly mean that he wasn't involved with her death. But from Yuna's research, she hadn't found anything pointing to the existence of a "demon lord" or something similar that would indicate All For One's machinations at all, anywhere.
Yuna wasn't certain if All For One was alive, but she'd tentatively assume he wasn't for now until and unless proven otherwise. Crime did seem more prevalent in this world than it did in the anime, likely because there wasn't a Symbol of Peace around to deter criminals, but there weren't any Nomus, or criminals with multiple quirks running around.
But well, all that and more differences meant Yuna's "meta knowledge" wasn't all that useful. Of course, that's not even mentioning that she wasn't even born in the main cast's generation. No, she was born around the same time as Eraserhead, Midnight, and Present Mic. Which means Yuna would be about 30 by the time Izuku and his friends entered UA.
That meant she may as well be blind when it comes to future knowledge, which was a scary thing to accept at first, but she eventually got over it and decided to take her life one step at a time. Yuna didn't need to worry about some far-off future that will likely never come to pass. Instead, she had long decided to simply have some fun and enjoy this second chance.
Which, of course, meant going to UA and becoming a hero.
Come on, was there really any other path to take? Yuna didn't think so. She was not interested in working some boring nine-to-five for the rest of her life. Nor did she wish to live like a villain. Not because of her morals or anything, but because hiding from and constantly having to clash with heroes seemed like way too much of a hassle. Not to mention the occasional vigilante or even other villains that might take exception to whatever crimes she'd be committing.
That left being a Hero, every child's dream in the world of My Hero Academia.
Hero worship was ever-present in Japanese culture and society, right alongside quirk worship. If you had a "good quirk", well, you were set for life. Certain jobs looked for certain quirks and would go out of their way to recruit someone with a quirk that they needed. Electricity quirks, for one, were always in high demand, as well as any quirk that produces some kind of substance or material. Researchers love to study quirk-based matter.
Then there are quirks that are good for hero work. These are your typical physical enhancement quirks. Strength, speed, durability, and extra sensory types. Powerful Emitter types are sought after, too. Pyrokinetics, Cryokinetics, Telekinetics, etc. Rarer quirks can be great for hero work as well, such as Eraserhead's quirk, Erasure, or Ms. Joke's quirk that makes someone break out into hysterical laughter.
Yuna's quirk was, well... Pretty good if she had to say so.
Yuna called her quirk Shifting Slime, which was pretty self-explanatory. Her entire body was made up of a black goo-like slime, which she could shift and change the shape of at will. It took a significant amount of practice, and because of its nature as a "mutant" type quirk, it meant that her natural form was actually just a blob of black goo.
Yeah... it wasn't fun when she first got her quirk at age four. It took Yuna a long time to actually pull herself together into something that looked relatively human, and much longer still to get to the look she wished for. But once she did, her quirk became pretty awesome.
She was able to sprout tentacles from anywhere on her body and shift them into primitive weapons, change her looks (with a lot of time and effort), and dissolve materials with her body very quickly.
She could use her tentacles for many things. Movement in the form of mimicking Spider-Man, bindings by wrapping up a target, and, of course, just beating someone up with them.
They could also be used for more... lewd things. But Yuna hasn't gotten around to doing anything like that yet, for a few reasons.
For one, she was technically a reincarnate, which made her feel much older than she appeared, and Yuna wasn't attracted to children. Which meant she hadn't dated anyone so far in her second life.
For two, she was a lesbian, and My Hero's Japan, even in an alternate universe, with a lot of people looking like anthropomorphic objects, such as a damn spray bottle or a washing machine, society still wasn't very accepting of same-sex relationships.
And lastly, her quirk. Her quirk meant any relationship she'd be in would be... unorthodox. Not just because she was essentially a sentient/sapient glob of black goo, but also because her quirk had another aspect that she hadn't yet shared with anyone.
The way for her quirk to truly shine, would be when/if she bonded with another person.
Yuna's quirk was very similar to a Marvel Symbiote in that way, but also very different. But where they were mainly alike was that a Symbiote needs to bond with another organism.
Due to Yuna's quirk, along with the fact that quirks can and do influence people's thoughts and actions, Yuna has felt the need to find someone to bond with ever since she was four years old.
It meant that, unfortunately, Yuna had never felt whole. Not really. She always felt like something was missing. That feeling was partly the reason why she applied to UA to become a hero.
She was looking for someone to become her other half.
See, she had thought long and hard about what she'd want in what would essentially be a lifelong partner. She wanted, no, needed someone she was attracted to, which meant a pretty woman, as Yuna did not find the thought of living within a man to be appealing. It also meant this hypothetical person would be fine with having Yuna literally bonded to their body, being together 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
They'd need to be a hero, because Yuna wanted some thrill in her life, and heroes certainly had that going for them.
And they'd have to be fine with tentacles, because Yuna would be lying if she said she'd never fantasized about ruining an attractive woman with her tentacles...
But with Japan being Japan, that was actually a pretty common fetish for women, which was a point in Yuna's favor. She'd even had a couple of girls approach her when she was in high school and ask to be... defiled by her. However, she politely declined, as she wasn't interested in casual sex, much less anything to do with minors.
But now that she was (hopefully) going to University, she'd be able to find an acceptable woman to date, and hopefully, bond with.
Shaking those thoughts out of her head, Yuna squared her shoulders and stepped through UA's iconic arch, ignoring the looks of her fellow applicants as they watched her acting like some dramatic anime character.
She wasn't being dramatic! It was just a big moment is all. Especially for someone like her, who had literally seen all of this stuff an entire lifetime ago in an anime!
Letting out a somewhat frustrated sigh at people's skewed judgment, Yuna followed the flow of the other applicants into UA's grounds, admiring the architecture as she passed. Things looked remarkably similar to what little she remembered, and yet still very different when viewed through her own eyes and not that of a screen.
The grounds were well maintained, the massive windows covering the main building were all polished and cleaned perfectly, and even the way the birds were singing all sounded like something out of a storybook instead of a University. But, Yuna supposed that's just the standard that the number one hero school in Japan needs to hold itself to if it wants to remain on top.
There were about a dozen or so hero schools in Japan that she knew of, all with wildly differing standards, but UA was by far the hardest to get into.
Seriously! Yuna had perfect grades her entire life, mainly due to her status as a reincarnate and a dedicated study schedule, and she still only barely made the cut!
Really, things were much stricter than she remembered. Only having five people per class was just the start. From what she remembered, Izuku's class had like 20 students. Then again, maybe it would change in the future, and this was just how things were run during her time.
You also had to have a decent quirk to even show up. There would be no way someone with stretchy eyeballs or rainbow farts would be accepted. UA double and triple-checked your quirk registry to make sure your quirk was "good enough" for hero work.
Yuna was certain they did at least a basic background check on everyone who applied, and a more extensive one for those they cleared to take the entrance exam. The madam from the orphanage Yuna grew up in literally had someone from UA's support staff approach her and ask questions about Yuna! Like what her personality was like, how well-behaved she was as a child, and how she got along with the other kids.
It was a little scary, but also reassuring, as Yuna likely wouldn't have to worry about one of her classmates being a mole for some villain or something. They would hopefully catch something like that in this timeline.
Having finally arrived at some kind of auditorium, Yuna listened to the instructions given to them by the Pro Hero, Ecotoplasm, and sat down at one of the desks to begin the riveting task of... paperwork.
Yeah... Looking down at the fat stack of paperwork she and the other applicants had to read and fill out before they began their exams, Yuna was maybe having second thoughts about becoming a hero. Surely villains wouldn't have to do something like this, would they?